Neighbors Attack Nn Over Work

Stormwater Project Left Problems Behind

NEWPORT NEWS — Several residents of Green Oaks are dissatisfied with a city stormwater improvement project that they say left behind sandy, sparsely grown lawns, crooked utility poles and patchwork road repairs.

The centerpiece of the $350,000 project off Jefferson Avenue in midtown Newport News, which began last fall and was completed in the spring, is an enormous stormwater pipe buried between the properties of Pam Bray and Tom Ballowe and all along Morrison Avenue.

Installing the pipe wasn't the problem, Bray and Ballowe say; the problem was how the contractor, Vico Construction Corp. of Virginia Beach, left the neighborhood - and how the city has responded to their complaints.

City engineers deny even knowing of some of the complaints that Bray and Ballowe made to the Daily Press. But they acknowledge blame for the state of the neighbors' lawns and promise to have the contractor fix it.

"I think we owe them a decent topsoiling and a decent seeding, and I'm not sure they got them," says Eddie Wrightson, head of the stormwater management division of the city's department of engineering.

Bray and Ballowe have heard these promises since April, they say, when Ballowe brought a petition with 51 signatures to the City Council. Mayor Barry DuVal promised then that the matter would be looked into. Now Bray wants results, she says.

"They promised to take away six inches of sand and come back with topsoil, and we got two wheelbarrows full of topsoil last week," says Bray, pointing to an 80-foot expanse of sandy, clumpy grass that she and Ballowe say is the result of the project.

Ballowe also is displeased with the crooked utility pole hanging off his home, and with the state of Morrison Avenue, which is freshly patched in many parts, but older and grooved in others.

"They've done a shoddy job," he says. "I paid over $100,000 for this house and I couldn't get that now, not with the way the street looks."

Wrightson says he didn't know of Ballowe's complaint about the utility pole, but agrees that the city should work with Bell Atlantic to fix it. Another city official, Field Engineer Henry Walker, says the city originally had intended to leave much of the road as it is; now, because of the residents' complaints and orders from the City Council, the city will resurface it by the end of the summer.

"We get chastised for throwing money away," Walker says, adding that the portion of Morrison south of Belmont looks like a patchwork today but would have faded in a few months.

Both Wrightson and Walker suggested that some of Bray's complaints - including her claims that the contractor killed an oak tree in her front lawn, left her already-cracked driveway listing to one side, and broke a manhole cover on Morrison Avenue in front of her home - are unfounded.

"That was already broken," Walker said. "You would not believe what some people will say. That's why we go around and take pictures."